Restaurant Roundup: Nashville

I was recently in Nashville for just 36 hours – turns out there is an awful lot you can actually see and do in a short time in that wonderful town! I’ll be doing a post about that experience soon, but for now let me share two great restaurants you might want to pop into if you’re going to Nashville. I had the first afternoon to myself so for lunch I found a chair at the counter at Etch, an upscale interesting eatery right across the street from the Country Music Hall of Fame, to watch the chefs work.This is just a half order of the Tempura Oyster Mushrooms with Korean hot chili mayo and ponzu sauce. Something fried was a preview of what would come over a week in Tennessee and Kentucky, and I’ll admit, there’s something so enticing about fried food – I could have eaten this whole plate full. Spectacular!But I didn’t because I saved room for the Turkish Fish Tacos with lemon sesame sumac fish, tomato aleppo salsa, feta cream, eggplant, corn tortillas, red cabbage, green harissa, and cilantro. So very different than the fish tacos I get here in Denver, but so very good too.When my friends all gathered the next day, we had dinner at 5th and Taylor, about a mile from all of the honky tonk bar mayhem on Lower Broad. The space is gorgeous – the wide open room with a huge status of General Nash in the middle somehow seems to feel cozy and warm. We started with oysters, but they were gone before I could even snap a photo.I had no intention at all of eating a sausage and cheddar biscuit, but after a tiny taste I was hooked. Pretty sure five of us cleaned this plate.I’m not sure when exactly I fell in love with beef tartare. It might have been on a short trip to Kiawah with friends in the spring of 2016. Or it might have been later that year when my husband was hospitalized in Spain and I took comfort in a dish that seemed to be on every restaurant menu in Madrid at the time. The tartare at 5th and Taylor didn’t disappoint – I mixed all the seasonings into the meat, and then we fought over every last morsel.Funny to see duck wings on the menu – I had just taken a cooking class from Elise Wiggins of Cattivella in Denver a few days before, and she said, “You want to really impress your friends at your next football party? Serve duck wings instead of chicken wings.” These were drizzled with truffle-honey and thyme. Need I say more?I had what sounded like a southern thing for my entree: duck’am. It was actually a duck breast wrapped in thin ham similar to prosciutto, seared until crisp, and served with blackberry, smoked cabbage, and red wine gravy. Honestly I was too full by then to eat the whole thing, but I did anyway. Vacations are not the time to count your calories!